Timothy Radcliffe's key idea here is 'faithful questioning'. Faithful questioners are rooted in their community and engage from that perspective in rational debate. Radcliffe does acknowledge of course that churches have not always been noted for their practice of rational debate but we would do well to try to get hold of what he's driving at.
He argues that the vigour of the churches relates to their powers of rational debate. Churches lose vigour through silence; they fear to speak out because it might threaten their unity (the unity of their tradition even before they embark on ecumenical conversations).
Alternatively, there is too much noise; churches shout and do not listen or question, faithfully or otherwise. This noise betrays a lack of shared searching, a need to assert the truth lest we hear to its contrary. This noise does not recognise 'my truth is not the truth'. It is not evidence of faith but of ideology. Christian totalitarianism differs little from all the other totalitarianisms we have seen in the twentieth and earlier centuries.
For ecumenists, this totalitarian consciousness is not the main problem. We are aware of those churches which will not join in the ecumenical pilgrimage. Our main problem is our fear of difference, of what might happen should we lose the common ground. True friendship, according to Radcliffe, depends upon both similarity and difference.
Faithful questions are premised on our confidence in doctrine. It is difficult to ask questions, to reason where we fear for our own faith. It has always seemed odd to me that doubt is seen as a negative. It is only a negative where we lack confidence in our own faith. Faith leads us to question; it is only through questioning that we grow in faith. There will always be ambiguities, faith is ambiguous. The sort of certainty that baulks at reason lest it leads somewhere unsafe, is not faith but ideology.
Maybe some atheists will see faithful questioning as not an exercise in reason but in irrationality. For them, ambiguity based upon preposterous stories cannot serve any rational purpose. Science is successful because it rejects ambiguity and tries to establish what is certain. But rational certainty is only part of what constitutes good science.
Reason that rejects faith is impoverished reason. It is a shrunken rationality based on what can be measured, blind to the human being doing the measuring, who cannot avoid biase and distortion.
We need each other and our conversations. Our faithful questions expose our errors and help find common truth, not just between a few members of the same congregation but a dynamic truth embracing all times and people.
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